Sankofa

I heard a word and a concept the other day that I had never heard before. The word was Sankofa. It was described as the concept that we have to know where we have been to know where we are going.

I took some time to look up the word and to read more about it and what I found was that the word is associated with a Ghana proverb which translates as “It is not wrong to go back for that which you have forgotten.”

I spent most of my life with the motto that I would never go backwards because I wasn’t living there anymore. When I married the first time and divorced, I didn’t change my name back even though we had never had kids because it felt like that was going backwards. I hesitated to come back to work at the district attorney’s office almost 2 years ago because it felt like I was going backwards, but I did so because I felt both a calling to be there and like there was unfinished business that I needed to complete.

Over the past few months, I have spent a great deal of time looking backwards.  Not wallowing, not living there again, but looking backwards so that I could work through things I should’ve worked through when I was there the first time but didn’t. Looking backwards so that I could set things down where they belonged, instead of continuing to carry them with me long past the need for carrying them existed.

In the TBRI pre-training that I am doing right now, I heard something the other day that made me realize the importance of looking backwards at times, in depth, and with patience. Dr. Karyn Purvis said, “Parents have to be willing to look fiercely at their own histories. Not casually, but fiercely. I have to be honest and tell myself the truth and take months to process my history with fierce honesty, not just by a quick accounting to a spouse, a friend, or a counselor. And then I have to let go of it with a sense of forgiveness and humor.”

I think that’s part of what Sankofa is on a personal basis. Telling yourself the truth and working through your history with fierce honesty so that you can let go of it with a sense of forgiveness and humor. Going back for that which you have forgotten.

Perhaps you have forgotten what it is to laugh with abandon. Perhaps you have forgotten what it is to play. Perhaps you have forgotten how to let others love and cherish you. Perhaps you have forgotten how to love and cherish yourself.  

Whatever it is that you have forgotten, don’t be afraid to exercise Sankofa and go back and get it. Because we truly don’t know where we are going without knowing where we’ve been. And sometimes in the process of trying so hard not to go backwards into the past, we end up not realizing that we never actually left the past behind us in the first place. Until we tell ourselves the truth and are fiercely honest with our history, we will not be able to navigate our way through the maze of the past and let go of it with a sense of forgiveness and humor. We will just keep wandering around within it, lost, and unable to move on toward our future.

I had lunch with a friend earlier this week and I was telling her about some directions I may be going in the future and she commented that I had a sparkle in my eye now that she had never seen before. That I had always had a look in my eye before, a shadow that she didn't see anymore. My friend Sharon has been telling me for awhile now how much younger that I look lately. I credited that to the fact that I'm eating better and losing weight and exercising on a regular basis. But after this friend mentioned the sparkle, I realized it was more than just external changes that had made the difference in my countenance. It was the internal changes that had really made an impact on my whole being. In bringing dark things in my past to light, and working through them, I have made room for more light within myself.

You see, there were several things that I had forgotten that I needed to go back for.  My sparkle. My voice.  My light. I'm so glad that I was finally brave enough to take that trip. It's one of the hardest ones I've ever taken. But I've come out on the other side of the journey as so much more of me than I was when I went in.  And so much less of what I needed to let go of.  And most importantly, so much more of what God created me to be back in the beginning, before life changed who I was supposed to be.